If You're Thinking of Living In/Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn; On Cobblestone Streets, History Lingers

AS far as anyone knows, no vinegar has ever been mass-produced in Vinegar Hill, a minuscule neighborhood covering only eight blocks close to the Manhattan Bridge anchorage and abutting the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the borough's northwestern shore. In fact, its name comes from the site in County Wexford, Ireland, where Irish rebels fought the English in 1798. At one point, the area was called Irish Town after the people who settled in the buildings on its cobblestone streets.

Artists, architects, furniture makers and others live there now. Residents concede that it looks rough but insist that they feel safe. Despite an industrial aura, they say, the area is quiet.

''The only constant noise is the power plant,'' one resident said, and that is a low hum that becomes a sort of soothing white noise. The Hudson Avenue Generating Station, run by Con Edison, looms on Plymouth Street, swallowing several blocks. The plant, powered by oil, produces steam and electricity.

Some residents are resigned to this gigantic industrial presence while others have fought to make it as safe as possible. Last fall, the New York Public Interest Research Group filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency to require Con Edison to install more advanced pollution controls on a boiler that was shut down in the 1990's and restarted in 2001.

The research group and other environmental organizations contended it never went through a proper review, though Con Ed disagrees. ''We are expecting an answer from the E.P.A. in September,'' Tracy Peel, a staff lawyer with the research group, said of the petition.

Con Edison is evaluating the possibility of converting the plant to gas, which is environmentally cleaner, said Chris Olert, a spokesman, though such decisions, he added, take a long time.

T HERE are residents who are smitten with Vinegar Hill's small scale and remote village feeling. The Belgian-block streets, 19th-century wood-frame houses, brick row houses on Front Street and Gold Street and low-lying trees transport visitors and residents to another time.

The neighborhood boundaries are the Navy Yard to the east, the East River on the north, Nassau Street to the south and on the west, Bridge Street, the border with the neighborhood known as Dumbo.

Three separate sections in the vicinity of Bridge, Front and Plymouth Streets were given Historic District status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1997. The area is zoned primarily for manufacturing -- there is a smattering of warehouses and factories (including Damascus Bakeries, which produces pita bread) -- but it is just as much a residential enclave.

One subway train runs close by: the F, stopping at York Street (near Jay Street), about a five-minute walk away. The A train station at High Street in Brooklyn Heights, a 20-minute hike, is the next closest.

Studios and one- and two-bedroom units in a newly converted warehouse, the Bridges Condominiums at 79 Bridge Street, with loft-size windows and breathtaking views of the Brooklyn Bridge, have sold so fast that only a few two-bedroom units are left, said Highlyann Krasnow, an executive vice president of the Developers Group, the broker for the building. Most people moving in are 25 to 35 years old, she said.

The studios started at $335,000; one-bedroom apartments were $378,000 to $472,000; and two-bedroom, two-bathroom units, some with terraces or balconies, were $705,000. Indoor parking spaces are being sold for $30,000,

The Developers Group is also the broker for a warehouse condominium conversation at 50 Bridge Street, a 60-unit project that is nearly finished, Ms. Krasnow said.

Before the Revolutionary War, the land on which Vinegar Hill sits was owned primarily by two Dutch families: the Remsens and the Rapelyes.

After the war, John Jackson and Comfort and Joshua Sands bought large tracts running from Fulton Street to what eventually became the Navy Yard.

In 1801, Jackson acquired some of the Sands land and built row houses, calling the area Vinegar Hill to attract Irish immigrants. (Manhattan also has a Vinegar Hill, near 135th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, another former bastion of Irish newcomers.) He also sold about 40 acres of his waterfront to the Navy for a shipyard in which many of the immigrants (including Italians and Poles) worked. At the time, Sands Street, which now runs through the Farragut housing project, was the home of bars and brothels, earning the nickname Hell's Half Acre.

The project, named after David Glasgow Farragut, the first admiral in the United States Navy, was completed in 1952, and has a population of about 3,440 in 10 buildings.

With the opening of the Farragut Houses and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 50's, Vinegar Hill lost a swath of its original row houses and tenements; the highway also created a sense of being cut off from the rest of the city.

The Navy Yard, which had once brought many jobs to the area, closed in 1966. The city acquired it in the 70's and has turned the 265 acres into a hub for small manufacturers, warehouses and other enterprises. Plans have been announced for a movie studio.

What remains of Vinegar Hill from the 1800's, including the storefronts on Hudson Avenue, is remarkably unchanged, evoking visions of immigrants stepping out of their small homes every morning to go to work in the Navy Yard or the factories, or as maids to Brooklyn Heights families.

Many residences, now broken up into apartments, were built from the late 1820's to the 1850's, some in Italianate or Greek Revival styles. A cluster of such buildings on Front Street are well preserved, as is another group on Gold Street. One former storefront on Hudson Avenue still displays an old barber shop sign. An 1855-56 firehouse on Front Street, which was converted to residential use in 1976, virtually sparkles in the sun.

A 1925 building at 87 Hudson Avenue that was converted for apartments is for sale. Zoned for mixed use, the building is owned by a New York University professor who is asking $950,000 for a total of 4,500 square feet, according to Brian T. Leary, the director of sales for downtown Brooklyn for Massey Knakal Realty Services. ''The building is not landmarked, but offers views of the naval mansion,'' Mr. Leary said.

This mansion, originally the home of the Brooklyn Navy Yard commandant, has been converted to a private residence, largely hidden behind high brick walls draped in ivy. The mansion's driveway, off the Evans Street cul-de-sac, is visible through an ornate wrought-iron gate. A vintage Bentley and other old cars are parked in the driveway.

The house itself is white clapboard Federal style, with a pitched roof and a huge greenhouse; it was the commandant's house from 1806 until 1966, and was declared a city and state landmark in the 60's. Despite the house's seclusion, it imparts a regal air, as if it were a Newport waterfront mansion dropped inexplicably from the sky.

OTHER signs of vigor in the neighborhood include a five-story condominium under construction at 85 Hudson Avenue. Done in postmodern fashion, with green casement windows and a facade of brick and decorative cast concrete, its nine apartments are scheduled to be completed this fall, said Paul Tocci, the chief executive of the Constellation Group, the developer.

At Gold and Water Streets, closer to Dumbo, a brick-front rental apartment complex with 26 units is just about complete, said Theresa Gallo, office manager for South Heights Development, the developer. One-bedroom apartments are to cost $1,800 a month; two-bedroom apartments $2,200 to $4,000; and a single three-bedroom apartment, with Manhattan views, $5,000.

On an empty lot at the juncture of Evans, Little and Plymouth Streets, a development group headed by Sau L. Cheung and managed by A. L. Santagata, a broker and appraiser based in Brooklyn Heights, plans to put up nine two-family attached town houses in a Federal-style carriage house design. The brick town houses will have garages and will range from 2,100 to 3,500 square feet. They will most likely sell for $625,000 to $850,000 when completed next spring, Mr. Santagata said.

Children who live in the neighborhood have a choice of several public schools. Some people are excited by recent changes at Public School 8 in Brooklyn Heights, including the appointment of a new principal, Seth Phillips. (Its English test score for fourth graders this year was 58 percent, meeting standards.) Plans to invigorate the school include instituting the new citywide curriculum, offering extensive staff development and creating more inviting classrooms (think rugs), according to Carmen Farina, the Region 8 superintendent.

Douglas Schickler has lived with his wife and two children in a house in the historic district for eight years. ''I like that everybody knows each other here,'' he said, but the choice of schools, he conceded, has been a problem. His children attend P.S. 29 in Cobble Hill, and they are watching the developments at P.S. 8 closely.

In the midst of the Hill, at 98 Gold Street, a yellow cinder-block wall topped with razor wire is an unlikely sight. Inside is the Dorje Ling Buddhist Center, where the public can chant in the temple on Tuesday and Friday evenings, said Eddie Hum, a member.

Shopping is severely limited, with a string of bodegas and a Fine Food Supermarket on York Street, but Dumbo has more stores. Two restaurants, specializing in Latino food, lie within Vinegar Hill's boundaries: Lano's Family Cafe on Bridge Street and Los Papi's, a deli, next door. For more sophisticated restaurants, residents trek to Dumbo, Fort Greene or Brooklyn Heights.

For recreation, they ramble over to a large park with ball fields and a playground at Navy Street or to the Brooklyn Bridge Park playground and the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, both in Dumbo.